Monday, February 25, 2013

When most Minnesota residents
contact city officials by e-mail, they typically don’t know or expect that
their e-mail address could be requested by, and given to, another organization
or person, for any reason. Under current state law, though,
when a citizen submits contact information to a city or government agency in
order to receive newsletters or crime alerts, or to register a complaint, the
citizen’s e-mail address and phone number become public data. Any third
party can request the e-mail address or phone number and use it for any
purpose, and the city is required by law to comply with the request.

Later this week, the Minnesota House
Data Practices Subcommittee will hear testimony on legislation that would
change all of that. The House version of the bill, HF 20/SF 60, is authored by
Representative Mike Freiberg (DFL-Golden Valley), and would make citizen e-mail
addresses and phone numbers private data under the Minnesota Government Data
Practices Act.

The e-mail privacy bill is
supported by the League of Minnesota Cities, a municipal association that
represents more than 830 city governments in the state. According to League
lobbyist Patrick Hynes, “The new bill does not make content private; just the
contact information of citizens. It strikes the right balance between
government transparency and protecting citizen privacy.”

Over the past few months, several
cities received requests for all citizen email addresses maintained by the
city. This has often resulted in unexpected email solicitations.
For example, during a previous legislative hearing on the bill, Assistant City
Manager Chuck Ahl of Maplewood testified that his city was recently forced to
turn over 6,000 email addresses of Maplewood citizens to a third party.
The email addresses had been collected to help implement Maplewood’s new trash
collection system.

The House Data PracticesSubcommittee is scheduled to hear the bill on Wednesday, February 27 at 4
p.m. The Subcommittee will hear a number of data practices bills, and
consider which to include in a larger, omnibus bill. The email privacy
bill has received one hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Senate
bill author Bev Scalze (DFL-Little Canada) expects a second hearing to be
scheduled in the coming weeks.

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